backup problem

I am a total newbie to this so bear with me, I have true image 9.1 3534 (I think) and I wanted to make a whole backup of my c drive (roughly 12GB) because my laptop has a turn for the worst quite often and I always have to use my restore disks then install software one by one from scratch.

I clicked backup and when through the steps but when I inserted a dvd-r disk the burning failed and it said something like the problem could be the media that im using but I use this brand of disk all the time and I tried others but it still says the reason may be poor media quality.

Is it possible to save it to the same drive that im backing up instead of going direct to dvd then burn to dvd with another program eg. nero?

Yes, if there is enough room. You may get a warning but ignore it. To be able to restore you must copy it off since you cannot restore a partition that contains the archive. If your archive is bigger than a DVD be sure you split the archive while creating it. Split sizes are selected either from Tools Options .... at the main screen or within the backup wizard at the options screen.

Be sure you verify your image after creating and use Nero's "verfiy after burning" option so you know your DVDs are good.

Although I much prefer this method (the so-called 2-step method) of saving an archive to DVD you may be able to get the direct writing method to work by downloading the latest build which is 3677 for TI Home. Also, do not check the "automatically validate image after creating" box in the Options since this has a known bug and can put you in an endless loop. Do your validate independently after the archive is created.

1) I didnt understand "To be able to restore you must copy it off since you cannot restore a partition that contains the archive" can you explain more.

2) How do I verify the image after creating it if I shoulnt check the "automatically validate image after creating"

3) Using nero do I burn the image as a data cd?

4) Under media components in options do I make sure that 'place acronis one-click restore on media' & 'place acronis true image (full version) on media' are unchecked? I ask this because I am not saving straight to dvd.

1) You can store the image of C: on C: itself (free space permitting) but then you should copy the .tib image files elswere, because you cannot restore C: if it's image is stored there (on restore, the first action by TI is to delete the destination partition and that wipes the image file you are about to restore).

2) Invoke the separate Validate tool from the main menu.

3) Yes. When you create the image beforehand, set the image split size in Options to 1492 MB. Ignore the drop-down list of sizes, just input that value in the input line and burn three 1492 MB files per DVD.

4) The creation of a Rescue CD is not related to the place you will be storing your images to. I suggest you do not check One-click restore (you should learn about it's drawbacks first) but you do check Full version.

thank bVolk for the answers, however I still am not sure about the first question.

I plan to use this true image restore just after i've used my laptop restore disks to get back to factory settings so the image will not be on the drive anyway, I think thats what you meant........right?

Restoring the drive to factory settings ("day one" state) by means of the CD supplied with the machine has nothing to do with True Image.

True Image will give you the option to create an image of the drive at any time you wish and later restore that image to return the drive to the same state it was in when the image was created. When you create a disk/partition image the contents of the disk (or of just a partition) are copied to an image file with the .tib extension which is stored wherever you choose. On restore, you select the image file and it's contents are copied back to the drive which is so restored to the exact state as when imaged (not the state it came in from the store).

If you create system disk (or system partition) images regularily, you will be able to return the drive to a previous state after Windows crashes or you get an infection or you want to get completely rid of a program you were trying out. You will return to a healthy disk state (of, say, a few days earlier) without loosing any Windows settings or previously installed applications that you want to keep. What you do loose is the troubling event that has just happened and you want to eliminate.

3) No need to delete the laptop images from the desktop if space on the latter is no problem. In fact, restoring the image residing on the desktop instead of from DVDs should be faster, though I'm not sure about that since I have no network. I also do not know the network capabilities of the various editions of TI.

3) No need to delete the laptop images from the desktop if space on the latter is no problem. In fact, restoring the image residing on the desktop instead of from DVDs should be faster, though I'm not sure about that since I have no network. I also do not know the network capabilities of the various editions of TI.

Yes, delete the image files from the desktop, but only after you have either validated the copy on DVDs with the TI Validate tool or carried out a bit to bit compare against the originals or at least compared their checksums.

The MD5 checksum values calculated for the original file and it's copy must match. If the original file and it's copy are not identical, the difference between the two MD5 values will be visible at first sight.

You may restore any backup you have available, though the image created last will be probably the one you'll want to restore (so as not to loose any programs you installed lately) if the computer was working well at the time you created that last image. On the other hand, if you wanted to leave out some programs installed lately, you would restore an earlier image.

The last DVD holds the last file (volume) of the multivolume image, which in turn holds the information about the structure of the whole image spread over several volumes. This way TI knows how many volumes to expect overall and proceedes to copy the data back to disk in reverse order. When all the files from disk 2 are restored, TI will prompt you to insert disk 1 and then continue until done.

Everything went fine unitll the buring part, I tried to burn the files to a data CD using nero and I made sure the "verify after burning" was selected but when the actual time came to verify the disk it failed.
I box came up saying DATA VERIFICATION FAILED and in the window that shows everything that happens it said:

I tried to use open up the checksum calculator so I clicked the install button but a message came up saying:
"errors encountered while performing the operation look at the information window for more details"
"The archive is either in unknown format or damaged"
so I cant use that program to check the disk.